Gehry Residence Floor Plan -

Before delving into the floor plan, it is essential to understand the project's origins. In 1977, Frank Gehry and his wife, Berta, purchased an unassuming, two-story Dutch Colonial bungalow built around 1920 in a quiet Santa Monica neighborhood. The existing house was a typical suburban home, but Gehry had a radical vision. Rather than demolishing it, he decided to use it as the core of an experimental work of art. The following year, with a modest budget of $50,000 and a team including project designer Paul Lubowicki, Gehry began a transformation that would become a landmark of deconstructivist architecture.

To understand the floor plan of the Gehry Residence, one must understand its primary conceptual driver: the collision of two distinct architectural eras.

Note: The Gehry Residence remains a private home. While public blueprints are available in architectural monographs like "Gehry, Frank: The Complete Works," the house is not open to the public. However, its influence can be seen in every deconstructivist building that followed.

Why do architects obsess over this specific floor plan? Because it broke every rule of "Good Design" in 1978. gehry residence floor plan

The floor plan taught them a new kind of living. The dining table had to double as a desk because the study was a triangle. The chain-link fence in the living room—metal mesh meant for the street—carried their hanging plants. They learned to move diagonally through life .

Knowing these details will help me provide the exact structural breakdown or historical context you need.

A description of the floor plan is incomplete without understanding the materials that define its walls. Gehry intentionally used "mundane" industrial materials typically excluded from high architecture: Before delving into the floor plan, it is

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Gehry Residence floor plan is that circulation is not defined by hallways.

The original exterior walls became interior walls for the new spaces, creating a "house within a house" effect.

The upper level of the Gehry Residence contains the private quarters, including the bedrooms and bathrooms. While it maintains more of the original house's footprint than the ground floor, it is equally impacted by Gehry’s deconstructive interventions. Master Bedroom and Additions Rather than demolishing it, he decided to use

The material choices in the floor plan are integral to its spatial experience. The plan acts as a canvas for industrial materials rarely seen in residential architecture.

He wrote back: Never.

The Gehry Residence floor plan is not static; it is a document of the Gehry family's growth, changing in two major phases.

The ground floor plan is where Gehry’s disruption of traditional domestic space is most apparent. The layout forces a departure from standard residential circulation.

The ground floor plan is punctured by skewed, cubic volumes that break the orthogonal grid of both the old house and the suburban lot line.